


you don't change the world.

by ohioinmymind



Series: beautiful savages. [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M, i just finished kings of cool and needed to update this verse, if you read the first part this will make sense, it's short but i couldn't get it out of my head so here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohioinmymind/pseuds/ohioinmymind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s funny because they all know the only thing Liam has ever begged for is Zayn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you don't change the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's so short, but I'm in a Don Winslow stage right now, so I'll proabbly write more soon, maybe. Seriously, sorry for it being so short, I'm a dick.

She knows what a split looks like. Eleanor knows that blood runs hot down a lip and there's a line in one of your bones when your body breaks. There’s no adult around to tell her what a fractured heart feels like, just a boy with a sad smile on his face and her underwear in his pocket. When her phone cracks after a long night and too many lost inhibitions, Eleanor doesn’t need to look at her bleeding thumbs to know that something is wrong.

Eleanor knows what _split_ looks like, can tell when something is just broken.

She is broken. Zayn is broken. Liam is broken.

 _Zayn and Liam_ are not broken.

Somewhere in the sand and the heat, Liam and Zayn became _LiamandZayn_ and Eleanor knows that no crowbar or pretty girl will separate that combination of souls and syllables. But there are some things that try, that get very close. Eleanor is left to cover her ears, flit away into the daylight and buy shiny things that won’t make her any less empty but they will fill the time.

When she comes back though the door, they’re still yelling and she still hates it.

She was stupid once before, when she was fifteen and looking for love in grey-haired men with big wallets and demands that made her cry. She’s not stupid now, so Eleanor doesn’t waste her breath telling them to cut it out, because she knows that Liam needs to fight as much as Zayn needs to fight back.

“You just signed up,” Zayn throws his hands because he’s broken too many vases and Liam doesn’t keep them in the house anymore. So he throws _looks_ at Liam and Eleanor thinks those will hurt more than glass shards and paint chippings. “You landed here four fucking days ago and you’re ready to run back and get blown away. Just signed up like you’re _begging_ for it.”

Eleanor laughs to herself, twirls her hair and folds her legs. It’s funny because they all know the only thing Liam has ever begged for is Zayn.

They don’t hear her, she doesn’t mind.

“You got a call from Ghana today, you know that?”

Liam’s not tense, just scared. Liam’s never been scared of anything but Zayn being angry with him, so he pretends to be bored and stiff and Eleanor wants to cry into her pillow at night because Liam is so scared they’re going to wake up one day and stop loving him.

They’re not his father.

His mother.

They’ll never stop, and Liam still doesn’t get that.

Zayn cries, too.

They all cry.

Eleanor knows where this is headed, what it’s about. Like she knows that Zayn will shed his controlled exterior and rush Liam like he hasn’t killed a man with the strength of his hands. Zayn is never scared, not of Liam.

Just _for_ him.

“What about Ghana,” Zayn asks, and his face twists into this confused thing that Liam turns away from, and she really should be more bothered that they don’t see her. But she’s not. “I go there to build schools, not dig trenches and dodge bullets. Ghana has nothing on—”

War.

Zayn thinks Ghana has nothing on War, but he’s missing the point.

They’re both missing the point and Eleanor waits for them to get it while their hardwired gravitational pull brings them inches closer with the seconds that fly by them.

Ghana and Afghanistan.

What they’re both really trying to ask is, _“Why do you have to go so far away?”_

Women were invented to think for men; to trick them and love them and scam them and benefit from their stupidity, but also to think for them. But this is something she has to let them come to on their own. She can’t watch them barrel at one another, because they’ll show her things she’s not supposed to see. Eleanor isn’t supposed to know that Liam has taken lives for Zayn, or that Zayn has given his life to Liam. She’s not supposed to know that they love her, just not as much as they love one another.

But really, how stupid do they think she is to not have known that already?

She grabs Zayn’s keys because his car is nice and small and costs more than her mother ever made at the convenience store. She’ll come back with something shiny or skimpy or flashy because she’s good at that. Eleanor will come home well after Zayn and Liam have finished mending their fences, and she’ll climb over the pickets into the space they’ve created for her.

Eleanor knows what a split looks like, knows that Zayn only throws things because he cares and that Liam is only jealous of anything that could take Zayn’s attention for longer than a second.

She knows what broken looks like, they’re all broken, the three of them.

But they’ll never split.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't kill me bc they didn't bang, I get major feels thinking about Liam Payne as Chon, ok? Tell me what you think, should I write more for this verse? Or nah.


End file.
